The Need of Flame and Sea
by Shadewynde
Summary: Horatio's compassion changes the lives of some very wounded souls.


THE NEED OF FLAME AND SEA

by Shadewynde

—-  
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Hi! I'm sorry for the EXTREMELY long silence, but I just got back from the hospital. I won't bore you with the details, but boy, am I glad  
THAT'S over! I am posting this, and for my next act - a new chapter of Lost Son of Avalon! Nobody better interrupt my CSI Miami Marathon, or I'll bury them  
so deep that even Horatio won't find them! Off to the keyboard, AWAYYYY! :) Please review, I hope you enjoy!

The first thing you see is the fire flickering in this hair.  
Then he looks up, and you see his eyes.  
Mutable, changing, vivid, like the tide, every shade of blue, even violet.  
It takes time to get to know him, to see past his controlled veneer.  
Then you see the red of torn wounds, the blaze of passion, the carefully-controlled emotion.  
When I sit with him - he's always brought coffee, with cinnamon and marshmallows, comfort for my inner child.  
Men look at me, see a whore and worse, a porn star, a body, little more than a pierce of meat.  
He doesn't.  
When he looks at me, he sees a person, knows my story of being hungry and alone and desperate.  
Of being used, degraded, always smiling as men - and some women - looked at me not as person, but a thing. Existing only to be lusted after, to be taken and used and cast aside, how they think the humiliation and pain they bought absolves them of their looks and use of my body.  
Horatio is so kind, almost paternal, but never disdainful or controlling, always able to listen and not judge, to offer comfort with a gentle touch on my shoulder, never a sick approximation of a caress, but only the touch of another human being.  
He saw _me_ , and the few times I had asked, humiliated and destitute, to sleep on his couch, he had simply nodded, fetched a blanket and a soft pillow - after I had refused to let _him_ sleep on a couch.  
In the morning - well, early afternoon - he had made me my favorite, blueberry pancakes.  
Horatio was the first man willing to be a friend, to simply care and not ask for specifics when I was struggling, to give me space when I needed it, to listen when it became too much, even let me rest my cheek against his shoulder and wish that I was a normal woman, because then I would have given him my heart and even my broken soul.  
He enrolled me in school, paid for my classes, got me an apartment, and helped me find a decent job.  
The people at the Institute - it was actually the Institute for the Promotion of Self-Worth - where I was a paid counselor.  
His kindness and warmth made me feel like a person, not a side of beef.  
He helped me find a safe place to heal.  
There were children there, of the broken and angry kind, who ignored those who could never understand, never imagine, what had been inflicted on them.  
There was Melissa, who would slice her skin open, watching the blood flow with a kind of detached fascination. She screamed when touched, she threw herself into walls until she was bloody, ate little and slept less.  
So I sat with her, accepting the pain her shattered nine-year-old mind could not process.  
After the third day, I dubbed her Mel, and she stopped banging her head bloody against the wall, wailing in agony, and I told her who I was, Who I had been.  
Later, a small group of damaged children and angry. bitter adolescents crept closer, listening, like wounded predators just now willing to consider to be tamed, though they could never be domesticated.  
One by one, they spoke, often in voices weak and throats sore, years of silence except for screams.  
After many months, they were able to listen without bolting in terrorized pain.  
They started to trust me.  
I told them what only Horatio knew - how my parents sold me to a perverted monster when I was ten.  
When the tears came, knowing I was only worth a vial of heroin, how I was sold from man to man, woman to woman, used and thrown aside like garbage.  
It was then Mel touched me.  
The hug was awkward, clearly a new, fragile thing for her,  
Jimmy, the thirteen-year-old blinded with acid dropped in his eyes to be "better at touching", lifted his head, as if seeing something for the first time in many years. He was angry and bitter, "owned" by men and tortured, his tongue and throat burned with a mixture of acid and lye, an angry, angry boy that was so very lost.  
Rachel, the oldest, had been her teacher's "secret" for almost a decade.  
Then she reached puberty, and was no longer "interesting", cut off from the false love and care that made her life endurable.  
She had set fire to the school and laughed as the flames burned her skin, blew up the walls, trapping the teachers, laughed and laughed as they screamed and writhed and burned.  
Perhaps her horrible burns provided some small sense of being clean again.  
In a way, the eight-year-old was frightening.  
She enjoyed fire, she enjoyed pain - but only to herself, only herself.  
The little girl had been prosecuted, but her past won the kind judge's compassion, and released to an unknown party's care.  
Rachel's burned, ravaged face had turned to me, and her whispered, broken voice uttered three words that shocked me.  
"You're still beautiful."  
Brett and Bryan were twin brothers, who spoke their own language and only to one another, neglected and abused souls who had only each other.  
They had turned in that eerie union they had, and twin pairs of green eyes showed compassion as few others were capable of.  
For a moment I saw the sea.  
Blue eyes that looks back at me, saw me, cared about me.  
I saw the flame, not as a bloody knife, but as a protective, cleansing force, one that protected and nurtured.  
Looking at these broken children, their tentative reaching out to me through their own horrors, I saw not society's castoffs, but truly beautiful youths trapped in a world of ugliness and pain.  
I swore that day, that I would protect them, as Horatio had protected me.  
I had tried to teach them survive.  
In that instant, I knew what real love was.  
From then on, I worked there Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.  
At Christmas, some kind soul had donated the few material things these wounded souls had ever had for themselves.  
Some were quite expensive, yet nothing had been scrimped nor done half way.  
Several times, I saw Horatio there, never judging, simply accepting, and I admit, I fell a little in love with the man.  
As the children explored the buffet, loaded down with everything from turkey and stuffing on to candied yams that had the faint taste not of marshmallows, but a kind of orange glaze with sprinkles.  
I had two helpings.  
When the children returned to play games in the Rec Room, they found game consoles and computers and tentatively began to explore these new bright, blinking things, picking games off the shelves ad taking turns, often with one of them acting as navigator and other actually controlling the avatars.  
Horatio was sitting in a desk chair, and he gifted me with one of those rare smiles of his.  
Gentle, warm, kind, and approving, my heart swelled with joy until I was sure it was going to explode.  
And though he didn't see it - Horatio was modest to the point it made me want to tear my hair out - he had not only saved me, gifting me with the most precious of things - acceptance. Patiently helping me put myself back together - he had saved them.  
The sea to comfort and heal, the sky to fly free.  
The fire to protect and light the way.  
I met his gaze and returned the smile.  
Horatio Caine.  
CSI.  
Friend.  
Compassion and fire and soothing cool.  
At that smile, I realized Cookie Devine was dead.  
Let her die.  
With the wonder of a child that saw the world for the first time, I finally knew who I was.  
And I knew what I wanted.  
One day, people would look at me and see not Cookie Devine, whore and porn star.  
One day soon, they would see me as someone else, an identity I chose and found myself willing to fight for.  
My name would be Sara Piper.  
Sara Piper, CSI.


End file.
